April 19, 2013

Green Fleets = Green Jobs

According to Brad Markell, Executive Director of the AFL-CIO's
Industrial Union Council, increased investment in advanced vehicle
technology is leading to more domestic jobs. "Why do hybrids and electric
vehicles produce more jobs?" asked Markell. "New content," he answered. "Somebody
has to engineer it, create production tools, and put the vehicles together."

This week, I attended the Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference
in Washington, DC. This is an annual conference where labor union organizers,
environmental organizers, and business leaders come together to discuss
challenges and opportunities in creating more domestic union jobs that move us
forward to a clean energy future. The conference is organized by the BlueGreen
Alliance, which is a coalition of some of the nation’s largest and most influential
environmental groups and unions, including the United Steelworkers, United Auto
Workers, AFL-CIO, Union of Concerned Scientists, National Wildlife Federation,
and Sierra Club.

I had the pleasure of putting together a workshop panel
called Green Fleets –Ramping Up Demand and
Production of Cleaner Fleet Vehicles.
Markell, one of our speakers and someone who worked for many years at the
United Auto Workers, said there is growing demand for more fuel efficient and
smaller vehicles, including hybrids and electric vehicles. He shared that the
number of jobs in the U.S. automotive sector went steadily down over the last
decade, but they started to rise again in 2011 and 2012. This increase in auto
industry jobs coincides with thousands of jobs in dozens of U.S. states recently
created in the advanced vehicle technology arena.

Joyce Mattman, General Motors' Director of Commercial
Product & Specialty Vehicles, also spoke on our panel. Mattman said that
her government and corporate fleet customers are increasingly asking for
"greener" vehicle models. "Three years ago, 16 percent of our [total number of] vehicles sold achieved at least 30
mpg highway; today, it’s 40 percent," said
Mattman. GM manufactures cars and light trucks that
run on gasoline, natural gas, E85, hybrid power, and electricity, including the Chevy Volt -- today’s best-selling
plug-in vehicle. GM is also doing research into vehicles that can run on
hydrogen fuel cells and next generation biofuels. Mattman was proud to say that
GM has received more clean-energy patents in the last two years than any other
company or organization.

I talked about the
importance of addressing vehicle fleets if we are to combat climate change
pollution. Even though fleet vehicles only make up about seven percent of the
vehicles on U.S. roads, they consume up to 35 percent of the oil. New light-duty vehicle
efficiency and emissions standards and upcoming medium- and heavy-duty
standards will only be strong and only be met if we can get individual
consumers and the companies that operate large numbers of fleet vehicles to
demand cleaner vehicles. Also, America's biggest companies are also among the
biggest consumers of tar sands, the dirtiest source of oil on earth -- and a
source that will dramatically increase if we allow the Keystone XL pipeline to
be built. You will soon here much more from Sierra Club about oil, vehicle
fleets, and what companies and activists can do.

The conference
included dozens of workshop panels and an illustrious group of plenary
speakers, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, U.S. Transportation
Secretary Ray LaHood, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune, President
of the Communication Workers of America Larry Cohen, President of the United
Steelworkers Leo Gerard, U.S. Congresswoman Michelle Lujan Grisham, and AFL-CIO
President Richard Trumpka. Many major corporations, including International
Paper, General Motors, and Alcoa, also sent high-level speakers.

While there have
been important efficiency improvements by GM and other vehicle manufacturers as
well as in numerous other industries, we cannot rest on our laurels if we’re to
meet the crises we face in our economy and our climate. We need to build upon
the enthusiasm from this conference to work in earnest for more and better good, green jobs.

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